USDA outlines plan to fight salmonella

David Pierson

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has outlined a broad plan to combat salmonella. But some food safety advocates say it doesn't do enough to combat a pathogen responsible for 1.3 million illnesses in the U.S. each year.

The push has taken on new urgency this year after a salmonella outbreak tied to Foster Farms poultry from plants in central California sickened at least 389 people nationwide. The outbreak exhibited an especially virulent strain of salmonella that showed signs of resistance to antibiotics.

The USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service on Wednesday released a priority list of actions. They include developing more stringent sampling and testing and creating first-ever national standards for salmonella contamination rates in cut chicken parts. The agency also wants to expand a controversial test program to overhaul inspection procedures at slaughter facilities, a process that could lead to fewer government inspectors in the nation's poultry plants.

In an interview Wednesday,Elisabeth Hagen, under secretary for food safety, said the plan took a year to develop and was the most comprehensive effort the agency has taken to reduce salmonella.

"This is the biggest priority we have," Hagen said, "We've got over a million people in the U.S. getting sick.... Anything we can do to bring those numbers down is critical to protecting public health."

Food safety groups were quick to note that the effort does not address growing fears about antibiotic resistance in salmonella, a trend they blame on the regular use of the drugs on farms to either promote growth or preempt disease in animals.

"It doesn't address this larger issue of antibiotic-resistant salmonella," said Sarah Klein, an attorney for the Washington-based Center for Science in the Public Interest. "They're just kicking the can down the road."

The group wants the USDA to treat antibiotic resistant forms of salmonella like other pathogens such as E. coli, which triggers an automatic recall when found in food. Salmonella has not been held to those standards because the government doesn't consider it an adulterant, rather a naturally occurring bacteria that can be mitigated through safe food handling and thorough cooking.

Hagen, who is stepping down this month, said her agency could tackle antibiotic resistance only by reducing salmonella across the board.

"We have limitations on what we can do," she said. "Antibiotic resistance doesn't start where we have jurisdiction. It happens in farms."

The plan announced Wednesday also includes the expansion of a 14-year pilot program to take federal inspectors off slaughter facility lines to roam other parts of plants to identify and test for problems.

The USDA said salmonella can't be stopped by visual inspections alone. It estimates 5,000 illnesses could be prevented each year by redirecting inspectors across slaughterhouses to check for issues such as unsanitary surfaces and incorrect temperatures.

"We've had for decades and decades a lot of people spending all their efforts identifying visible defects in uniform poultry carcasses," Hagen said. "That's not what the focus should be on in 2013. That's not what makes people safe."

The USDA is still required to keep one inspector on the lines to review poultry. Still, downsizing looms for the agency. The USDA estimated that the new procedures would eliminate as many as 800 inspector positions, likely through attrition, and save the federal government $90 million over three years.

Critics say that amounts to self-policing by the companies. The reduction of inspectors allows poultry processors to increase the speed of production lines to 175 chickens per minute from 140, and 55 turkeys per minute from 45.

Food safety and worker advocates say that's dangerous for both employees and consumers, and cruel to the animals. A recent Washington Post investigation found that nearly 1 million chickens and turkeys were unintentionally boiled alive because of fast-moving factory lines.

Wenonah Hauter, director of Food & Water Watch, a Washington-based consumer rights group, said the new plan would do little to make poultry safer for the public.

"This flawed proposed rule cannot serve as the foundation of any serious plan to reduce salmonella rates in meat and poultry products," Hauter said. "To really tackle the salmonella problem, USDA should not be trying to cut government inspection of poultry products. Instead, the Obama administration needs to get the legal authority from Congress to hold companies accountable for putting contaminated food into commerce, not deregulate inspection."